Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Starbucks Finds Success With Mobile Payments

TCM Net: Since the launch of its mobile payment app in January, Starbucks has found success in its use to the tune of 20 million mobile payments.

In their quarterly report, CEO Howard Schultz said there are currently about 1 million smartphones in the U.S. with at least one registered Starbucks Card, and both the number and value of mobile transactions are on the rise. Starbucks also said terminals were at 9,000 Starbucks locations nationwide, with current support for Android and BlackBerry devices.

“The Starbucks Card mobile app continued to gain popularity as the Android app launched in June gained adoption and the updated iPhone continued to attract and gain users,” said Schultz.

According to VentureBeat, Starbucks processed more than 3 million payments just nine weeks after the launch of its app.

“The number of mobile payment transactions increases every month … we see sequential month-over-month increases in the number of customers that use mobile payment,” Adam Brotman, Starbucks’ vice president and general manager of digital ventures, said in an interview with VentureBeat. “Twenty million transactions speaks volumes.”

Starbucks attributes its future success on not only customer experience, but growing with technology.

“Our comp momentum remains broad-based and continued focus on the excellence of the customer experience in our stores continued expansion of the frequency driving the rewards program and robust innovation we're making both in products, like petite, and in technology, like mobile payment, laying the foundation for future growth,” said Troy Alstead, chief financial officer for Starbucks.

The company reported after the market closed that it earned $358.5 million, or 47 cents per share. That's up from $278.9 million, or 37 cents per share, last year. After adjusting for one-time gains and an extra week in the prior quarter, the company earned 37 cents compared with 32 cents last year.